


Battle Scars

by Cinerari



Category: Captain Harlock
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-02-27 04:39:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2679464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinerari/pseuds/Cinerari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harlock and Yama get ready for bed and vaguely discuss things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Battle Scars

**Author's Note:**

> Eeuuuughhh.  
> Fluff is gross. This drabble is also gross. Put it in the trash next to where I've made my home.  
> Also I am real good at writing summaries, clearly.

Yama was still quite young, and all that extra energy kept him going long after the older members of the crew needed a fifth shot of coffee to stay standing. He could sprint through a battle with reckless abandon, back and forth across a ship multiple times before he had to stop to catch his breath. But when he crashed, he crashed hard. Kei said his version of sleep was a coma. And instead of falling asleep, he passed out. When that boundless energy ran dry, he practically dropped dead.

That was how he appeared when I stepped out of the shower to find him face-down on my bed. He lay perpendicular, his legs hanging off the side as though he’d simply fallen onto it. I wasn’t sure how he was breathing, smothered in the blankets. All his clothes were as they’d been when we’d raided an enemy ship a few hours before. I hoped he didn’t plan to sleep on my bed with them.

“Yama,” I called as I pulled on some sleep pants. “If you’re going to sleep there, you could at least change.”

He responded with a growl, muffled by the mattress. One toe ground into the other, holding his boot down so he could pop his foot out. He repeated the process to leave him only in socks but didn’t move otherwise.

As I fluffed my hair dry with a towel, I walked over to him. My bare feet padded against the icy metal flooring. Still, he made no move to greet me. “Removing your shoes doesn’t count as changing. I’d prefer you took a shower also,” I said.

His head rolled to rest on his cheek, an attempt to glare at me lost in the ache of exhaustion. I shrugged. “If you’d shown up a little earlier, you could have taken a shower with me,” I said.

He seemed to wince as his cheek turned a few shades of pink. “I do not smell that bad,” he muttered, but he pushed himself up to stand and headed for my dresser. We’d played this ritual a few times, and it was good to see he’d learned I was fine with him borrowing clothes. Logically, he should have known to bring his own by now, but it was hard not to appreciate him wearing something three sizes too big.

With a yawn, he ground the heel of his hand into his eye. I tossed the towel back into the bathroom before seating myself on the bed to watch him druggedly peel off his clothes. “Don’t you have better things to be doing?” he asked without even looking back to check that my eye was on him. “Put on a shirt or something.”

I had to smile. “You’re by my shirts. You could throw me one.”

Though he pulled on one of my shirts, the collar showing off much of his bare collar and shoulders, he closed the drawer and walked over without throwing me one. A pair of my sleep pants threatened to trip him on the way, closed over his feet like wrapping paper. This time he bothered to crawl into bed the proper way.

“Why did you come here?” I asked.

He nuzzled his face into the pillow despite my preference for flatter ones. “Your bed is more comfortable.”

Our beds were all made of the same material.

His childish behavior was amusing, cute in its own right. Leaning over my side of the bed, I untied his eye patch and slipped it off his face. His eye was closed beneath it. He always forgot to take it off before bed, and it never stayed in place when he rolled around. Sometimes it slipped off, and he had to dig around under the sheets to find where it escaped to.

With my middle finger, I traced the line of his scar down to where his cheek met the pillow. It was no longer an irritated red, now soft and pink with new skin. “What’re you doing?” he asked, voice soft with the pull of sleep.

I had to shake my head, unable to give a straight answer. After placing his eye patch on the bedside table, I settled myself in beside him, lying on my back. Then he reached out, fingers brushing a star-shaped scar on my shoulder. His touch was so light it felt like little more than a breath. “You have a lot more than me,” he said. “Where’d you get this one?”

“Firefight.” I couldn’t recall the details of it. That was ages back.

Yama hummed as his fingers danced down my arm, lying atop the blankets. They paused at a long scar across my forearm. “What about this one?”

I wondered where his interest in sleeping had gone. “Swordfight,” I said. This one I did remember – the saber slicing over my arm. I felt bad for killing my opponent after he put up such a fight, but he’d left his mark in return.

I decided it was my turn to play the odd game and rolled to my side to properly face him. Tucked beneath his bangs, a smooth scar traced his hairline from his temple to forehead. “This one?” I echoed.

His brow furrowed, lips drawn into a pout. Instead of answering me right away, he scooted himself close until he could lean into my chest and hide the little scar. “Mistake,” he mumbled. To keep me from asking anything further, he tapped another splattered star shape just to the right of my heart.

I breathed a laugh. “Assassination attempt.” Taking his hand, I led it up to the tear across my face. His eye softened as he looked up to it. His fingers brushed it so gently it seemed he thought it might still hurt. “Mistake,” I said.

I took his hand again, this time pulling it back to examine. The tips of his fingers were covered in little nicks and lightened spots, like a constellation in his skin. “And this?” I asked.

This time he laughed, shoulders trembling at the action. “You’d be amazed how often I forgot which flowers had thorns when I was little.”

“That does sound like you.” I brushed my lips across his fingers. They were still soft, barely touched by calluses. “Would you care to sleep now?”

He answered with another hum. Pulling his hand from my grasp, he placed it to the back of my head to tilt my face down. As if standing on his toes, he pushed himself up to kiss where my scar dug into my cheek. Then he slipped back down, tucking his head beneath my chin. “Alright, lights off.”

The lights responded by vanishing, and we were left in the dark. When I was alone, it seemed to swallow me, but it was different with him. I listened for his breathing, felt the rise and fall of his chest. Having him to hold onto kept me stationary.

“Good night, Yama,” I said.

He grumbled some form of an answer as sleep claimed him from me again.


End file.
